#Franco-Ukrainian art

[lionofchaeronea]

The Umbrella, Marie Bashkirtseff, 1883

[useless-catalanfacts]

On January 30th 1938, one of the bombs dropped by the fascist aviation fell on Sant Felip Neri in Barcelona (Catalonia's capital city). This historical building was being used as a home for refugee children.

The Spanish fascist army was allied with Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany, both of which bombed the Iberian population and used the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) as a testing ground for never-seen-before cruel attacks on the civil population that they later used in the Second World War (1939-1945). They bombed homes, schools, markets and everything. They bombed cities and also villages with no strategic value.

The Oratorian priests who lived in the Sant Felip Neri convent had left at the beginning of the war. Then, the Government of Catalonia took care the empty building. The church was used for safekeeping valuable art and the convent was used for housing refugee children from areas of Spain which were already under Fascist occupation. Most of these children were from Alcalá de Henares (near Madrid), and there was also children from Barcelona whose parents had died or were at the frontline or too poor to afford food, so here there were given a loaf of bread and some condensed milk.

On January 1938, Barcelona was bombed by the Italian fascist aviation on the 1st, 7th, 11th, 15th, 19th, 20th, 25th, and 30th, which killed about 600 people.

That 30th was a Sunday. The bomb alarms went off in the morning, when all the children were having breakfast. The children and the neighbours ran to Sant Felip Neri's basement, which was used as a bomb shelter, but the basement's ceiling couldn't resist the bombs and it fell on them. More neighbours quickly ran to help rescue the children and soon the firefighters came too, but in the middle of this operation the fascist aviation bombed the same location again.

The official documents say that, on that January 30th 1938, the bombs killed 216 people and injured 125. 42 people died in that basement, out of which 30 were children. If you visit Sant Felip Neri's square nowadays, you can still see the holes in the façade wall left by the shrapnel.

When the fascists won the war, they twisted history to point at their enemies. In front of the visible scars of that bombing and the neighbours' memories, Franco's regime said that those marks on the wall were not the result of bombing. Instead, they said that they were left by an antifascist firing squad who shot the convent's priests. This explanation can't make sense because those don't look at all like bullet marks, and some of them are way too far up or down (so either there were priests who were over 2 meters tall or this was the firing squad with the worst aim in history). But the dictatorship's official history never cared about the facts and proof.

The first picture in this post is a photo of the refugee children who lived in Sant Felip Neri. The second photo is the aftermath.

Feixisme i guerra, mai més. / Fascism and war, never again.

Our heart goes to the Ukrainian and Tigrinya people living this horror in the present.

[usafphantom2]

Eurofighter Tranche 4 offers new technology features and updates

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 06/17/2023 - 18:00 in Military

In an effort to maintain the relevance of Eurofighter to the air combat environment until the German-French FCAS and the Italy-Japan-United Kingdom GCAP/Tempest went into production, the program partners remained busy updating the embedded systems.

The updates, which will be part of the configuration of new aircraft for Germany, will first appear on existing aircraft in the United Kingdom and among other partners.

Last year, Eurofighter's original partner nations established plans to update some of the Tranche 3 aircraft in their collective inventories and - in the case of Germany and Spain - acquire a new batch of Tranche 4 aircraft. Royal Air Force (RAF) upgrades to its current aircraft require a replacement of almost $3 billion of the older generation electronic systems with state-of-the-art hardware.

The German part of the multinational program, the Quadriga Project, requires the Luftwaffe to acquire 30 single-seater versions and eight biplace versions of the Tranche 4 aircraft to replace 38 Tranche 1 aircraft defined for retirement.

The Tranche 1 aircraft still operated by the four original partners - the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and Italy - is the subject of a proposal for the requirement of the Ukrainian Air Force (PSU) for a Western design fighter. The first choice for the PSU was the F-16 manufactured in the United States, but for months no movement in the supply of this model occurred.

The new Tranche 4 aircraft will come equipped with a new set of active electronic scanning radar (AESA), called the E-Scan European Common Radar System (ECRS). The description of the additional changes to the configuration specifies the "future-ready" hardware and the updated software to support the new generation subsystems.

The plans require the new construction models to support the Luftwaffe's Eurofighter fleet until the 2060s. At that time, the aircraft would be flying on missions in conjunction with the design of the new generation Franco-German-Spanish Future Combat Air System (FCAS). Between the two, Eurofighter's production lines will remain active until 2030 and potentially beyond.

In the United Kingdom, 40 Tranche 3 aircraft in service - and possibly some of the 67 Tranche 2 aircraft as well - will receive an update dubbed Phased 4 Enhancement (P4E) scheduled for integration with the introduction of ECRS. The modifications will present a new mission management and cockpit interface, GPS modernization and navigation functions and a new electronic countermeasure system to neutralize advanced electronic warfare systems.

INDUSTRIAL PLANNING

The installation of BAE Systems in Warton, which manufactures Eurofighter models for the United Kingdom, points out the new system updates, in addition to the new production models for Germany and Spain and all the test and integration work carried out for the ECRS AESA radar, will keep the line busy for some time.

The plan to sustain the production capacity of the program would combine the closure of Eurofighter's activity with the increase of the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) - a UK-Italy-Japan Tempest project to develop another next-generation aircraft model that would theoretically serve as an analogue of the FCAS.

Unfortunately, next-generation programs have the habit of starting later and working for longer than originally planned. Although the plans foresee that GCAP will go through an initial low-rate production (LRIP) by 2035 (Italy is asking for the delivery of export versions by 2040), if this date is delayed, the Warton plant may see a "gap" in its fighter production line.

Such an interruption would be disturbing, but not fatal, for the company, and industry observers pointed out that the stoppages on the Tornado line lasting three years preceded the Eurofighter project. However, Warton kept the installation ready for a restart, which was not direct, but prevented production capacity from atrophying.

ELECTRONICS OF GERMAN COMPANIES

The new radar and other electronic systems involve joint efforts between Eurofighter team members in different countries. The ECRS and other systems supplied to the Luftwaffe aircraft will come from the German defense electronics company Hensoldt. It would build the radar and other systems for the 38 German Tranche 4 aircraft and the hardware for the Luftwaffe retrofit of its Tranche 2 and 3 models.

Hensoldt acts as one of the industry partners in the multinational EuroRadar consortium; the others are Leonardo in the United Kingdom and Italy and Indra in Spain. The company's role goes back to the design of the first iteration of the AESA radar, originally designated Captor-E, Radar 1+ and ECRS Mk0, and produced for the Eurofighter export models ordered by Kuwait and Qatar.

The company also participated in the development of the next ECRD Mk1 variant. This system began to be developed in 2020 and features several updates to the Mk0, including a new digital multichannel receiver and improved transmission and reception (TRM) modules that operate on an expanded bandwidth.

By producing the Mk1 models, the German company will also be the supplier of the subsequent version - the Mk2 project under development for the RAF Eurofighters, for which Leonardo took the main role. Companies expect the demand for these ECRS models to increase as the modernization programs for older model Eurofighters expand.

What is called the Step 2 version of the Mk1 project will involve a software update that expands the capabilities of the processor, introduces mission management functions and allows the transmission of electronic war signals. Although the new aircraft represents an important phase at the end of the Eurofighter's production history, the electronic enhancements guarantee its operation until the second half of this century.

Source: AINOnline

Tags: Military AviationEurofighter Typhoon

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Daytona Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work around the world of aviation.

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Cavok Brazil - Digital Tchê Web Creation

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Cavok Brazil - Digital Tchê Web Creation

[futurepharaohs]

Recorded for Urf Radio, SOS EARTH is a wake up call for the humans of Planet Earth. Comprising of various talks / lectures and sonics that address topics like inequality, racism, war, nationalism, environmental collapse, mental & physical health, addiction, the fall of the American empire and more. It’s in all honesty not the most uplifting mix to consume but rather something made in the hope that it could in some way educate and inspire those who are feeling lost on this ball of confusion into revolutionising their minds and their environment. Tracklist The Art Of Noise - Crusoe Ft Yassin Bey Franco Tamponi - Submarino The Art Of Noise - Camilla Tom Dokoupil - Feelings Remo - SOS Earth The Orb - Close Encounters of The Ultraworld Ft Gabor Mate & The Watts Prophets Funkadelic - Free your mind and your ass will follow Curtis Mayfield - Check Out Your Mind Pure Essence - Wake Up The Exaltics & Paris The Black Fu - Propaganda DNA MCNZI - This Is Our Generation Friz Be - Now Is The Time Houschyar - Workers & Bosses Missing Persons - Rotten To The Core Spontaneous Overthrow - All About Money Jimmy Young - Times Are Tight The B.U.M.S. - Who Gives You The Right Dr Mary Sullivan Bain - Do You Know Black History Don Julian & The Larks - Message from a Black Man Speaker Music - Amerikkka's Bay (ft. Maia Sanaa) Ryuichi Sakamoto - ubi The Watts Prophets - Pain ommetis - seesick Ft The Ukrainian Army June11 - Who Is Still Dreaming? ommetis - sitting Ft Let’s Paint TV Sign Ibra - Mantodea vs. Furcifer Pardalis (Original Mix) Ft Noam Chomsky exael - room of veiled lights (2020 mix) Ft Saul Williams Paradise 3001 - Low Sun In Dub Ft Gabor Mate VASE - Versal Haki R Madhubuti & Nation - We Wound Each Other The System - Pendy! You're In Some Awful Danger Haki R Madhubuti & Nation - We Are A Nation Horace Silver - I've Had A Little Talk Maxayn - Everything Begins with You Nuno Canavarro - Untitled New Age Steppers - Nuclear Zulu Ft Lauryn Hill xphresh - luh MF DOOM - a word of advice (w- fog) Theatre West - Children Of Tomorrows Dreams Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek - LesLang Gus Coma - HMV rip Raymond Scott - IBM MT/ST - The Paperwork Explosion WeR7 - Word Perect (Edited) Jan Jelinek & Computer Soup - Barbecues's Version Beth Anderson - I Can't Stand It Haruomi Hosono - Down To The Earth Yusef Lateef - Robot Man Stevo - Save The World ommetis - cry Electronic Eye - Fourth World Destination Ft Heavens Gate Cult Sahel Sounds - Bambara affirmations, relaxation cassette Gonzo SE Asian Noises Ft Fred Hampton Hiroshi Yoshimura - Humming Water foraging - cry SAULT - Add A Little Bit Of Sault Ariel Kalma & Richard Tinti - Message 18.10.77 Frank Foster - The Loud Minority Ash Ra Tempel - Interplay Of Forces Masayoshi Fujita & Jan Jelinek - Vague Yet Walt Barr - Free Spirit

[oosizins]

Hey! I guess if you see that, that means that you wanted to know more about me😁

So here the basics:

Nickame: Adhora (I love it and I invented the meaning)

Age:16 (05 liner)

Pronounce: she/her

I'm a lesbian?...

Nationality: Franco-Ukrainian

Language: Franch russian english

MBTI: ENFP

My hobbies are singing, dancing, writing, drawing and everything that is related to music.

My aesthetic is cottage core, art hoe and farycore.

Anniversary of the blog is the 2 of april

I'm a NCT stan but I write majoritarly for nct dream we can still talk about what you want!

Other than NCT I stan, stray kids,twice, day6, itzy, Ateez, and many others.

Of course for the moment I don't have much people who read my work but with the time I would love if people think of me like there little supportive sister or something like that

I cannot support homophobia, racism and discrimination or hate if I see anything of that in my blog I'll block them or ban them (do something to not see them anymore).

Of course English isn't my native language so I'm really sorry if there is mistakes in my writing. I would love if someone would be okay to help me to correct myself if I made mistakes.

Thats it !

I hope you found it cool or even if you found it boring I hope you have a good day!

Thank you again to @alicanta77 for the inspiration of the layout!!! I love you

[bashartrading]

Odessa or Odesa (Ukrainian: Оде́са, romanized: Odesa [oˈdɛsɐ] (listen); Russian: Оде́сса, romanized: Odessa [ɐˈdʲesə]; Bulgarian: Оде́са, romanized: Odesa) is the third most populous city of Ukraine and a major tourism center, seaport and transport hub located on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. It is also the administrative center of the Odessa Raion and Odessa Oblast, as well a multiethnic cultural center. Odessa is sometimes called the "pearl of the Black Sea",[3] the "South Capital" (under the Russian Empire and Soviet Union), and "Southern Palmyra".

Before the Tsarist establishment of Odessa, an ancient Greek settlement existed at its location. A more recent Tatar settlement was also founded at the location by Hacı I Giray, the Khan of Crimea in 1440 that was named after him as Hacibey (or Khadjibey).[4] After a period of Lithuanian Grand Duchy control, Hacibey and surroundings became part of the domain of the Ottomans in 1529 and remained there until the empire's defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1792.

In 1794, the city of Odessa was founded by a decree of the Russian empress Catherine the Great. From 1819 to 1858, Odessa was a free port—a porto-franco. During the Soviet period, it was the most important port of trade in the Soviet Union and a Soviet naval base. On 1 January 2000, the Quarantine Pier at Odessa Commercial Sea Port was declared a free port and free economic zone for a period of 25 years.

During the 19th century, Odessa was the fourth largest city of Imperial Russia, after Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Warsaw.[5] Its historical architecture has a style more Mediterranean than Russian, having been heavily influenced by French and Italian styles. Some buildings are built in a mixture of different styles, including Art Nouveau, Renaissance and Classicist.[6]

Odessa is a warm-water port. The city of Odessa hosts both the Port of Odessa and Port Yuzhne, a significant oil terminal situated in the city's suburbs. Another notable port, Chornomorsk, is located in the same oblast, to the south-west of Odessa. Together they represent a major transport hub integrating with railways. Odessa's oil and chemical processing facilities are connected to Russian and European networks by strategic pipelines. Current population is 1,017,699 (2020 est.)[7]

Name

The city was named in compliance with the Greek Plan of Catherine the Great. It was named after the ancient Greek city of Odessos, which was mistakenly believed to have been located here. Odessa is located in between the ancient Greek cities of Tyras and Olbia, different from the ancient Odessos's location further west along the coast, which is at present day Varna, Bulgaria.[8]

Catherine's secretary of state Adrian Gribovsky [ru] claimed in his memoirs that the name was his suggestion. Some expressed doubts about this claim, while others noted the reputation of Gribovsky as an honest and modest man.[9]

History

Odessa was the site of a large Greek settlement no later than the middle of the 6th century BC (a necropolis from the 5th–3rd centuries BC has long been known in this area). Some scholars believe it to have been a trade settlement established by the Greek city of Histria. Whether the Bay of Odessa is the ancient "Port of the Histrians" cannot yet be considered a settled question based on the available evidence.[11] Archaeological artifacts confirm extensive links between the Odessa area and the eastern Mediterranean.

In the Middle Ages successive rulers of the Odessa region included various nomadic tribes (Petchenegs, Cumans), the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Ottoman Empire. Yedisan Crimean Tatars traded there in the 14th century.

Since middle of the 13th century the city's territory belonged to the Golden Horde domain.[12] On Italian navigational maps of 14th century on the place of Odessa is indicated the castle of Ginestra, at the time the center of a colony of the Republic of Genoa (more Gazaria).[12] At times when the Northern Black Sea littoral was controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, there existed a settlement of Kachibei which at first was mentioned in 1415.[12] By middle of 15th century the settlement was depopulated.[12]

During the reign of Khan Hacı I Giray of Crimea (1441–1466), the Khanate was endangered by the Golden Horde and the Ottoman Turks and, in search of allies, the khan agreed to cede the area to Lithuania. The site of present-day Odessa was then a fortress known as Khadjibey (named for Hacı I Giray, and also spelled Kocibey in English, Hacıbey or Hocabey in Turkish, and Hacıbey in Crimean Tatar).

[allbeendonebefore]

@ask-aph-acadia, @lilcutiebear, I’m making a new thread to reply to you both here p:

lilcutiebear: I took French immersion from k-12 so I’m very much in support of learning a second language and not monolingual. Personally I think there are two big factors in animosity towards French immersion in the west that have nothing to do with dislike of francophones. One is that I have seen articles complaining that it is like having a private school within the public school system (I’ve seen articles like that from basically every part of the country not just the west). More particular to the west is that many ppl here aren’t French Canadians or English Canadians and think it would make more sense to teach another language like German or Ukrainian or Chinese or Cree since more people here have those kinds of ancestry. So sometimes it feels like the east is pushing its linguistic divide onto us. I also feel like Anglophones here are different from Anglophones out east because a lot on Anglophones here are only Anglophones because their ancestors were forced to attend school in English rather than their native language. (I.e. My grandpa’s first language is Polish and even though he grew up in a community that was evenly split between poles and Ukrainians (with most kids understanding at least part of both)and his teacher was Ukrainian she wasn’t allowed to teach in any language other than English).

yes absolutely, this is another aspect of the issue that gets totally glossed over in the anglo/franco division. I don’t know about my personal family line but certainly people with my ancestry were discriminated against, forced to learn English, and also put in internment camps for their heritage and speaking Ukrainian. Canada making everything into a Catholic/Protestant or a French/English binary really does not evenly apply to the history of the West in particular but also can cause similar rifts elsewhere. Like we recognize bilingualism is good but 1. our educational systems are often garbage and 2. finding exposure to a native speaker of a target language can vary wildly, and learning French across Canada can be difficult if you are learning International French at School and Quebecois, Acadian or backwater prairie French at home. and 3. it’s always been grating that French (and English) are always prioritized over languages people already speak- we recognize Canada is a bilingual country, but there is not enough motivation or access to materials or native speakers in all locations unless you’re Really Super Determined to get a government job and can afford to move to a city with the programs. Canada is also a country of immigrants, and multilingualism should be celebrated beyond French and English.

ask-aph-acadia: For the criticism: I do remember seeing a few people draw the territories with darker skin, but since I couldn’t really see a big difference in their traits and the other provinces’ in the old art, I really had a hard time seeing if they were white or not, even though I know that First nations and Métis can have paler skin ( One of my characters is actually Métis and has pale skin, but I tried to make it easier to see with the other traits. ) I should maybe watch more of the ProCan videos though, just to make sure I don’t say things that were changed.

Lol i mean good luck, we basically do one video every three years and the projo has come to a standstill but yes Attempts Were Made 

I think that if PEI didn,t exist as a province at all I wouldn’t have had that much problems with NB and NS being a couple. I remember thinking that making it this way was excluding PEI from Acadia ( I can’t really say the Maritimes for this situation, since Newfoundland doesn’t have much to do with all of that ), forgetting that it’s been a part of NS too, maybe for a smaller time, but it still happened and gets forgotten a lot in designs for Acadia. PEI was also there when NB and NS talked about becoming one colony, so again seeing them as a couple made me feel like the smaller one was being kind of forgotten. I usually see people making PEI Nova Scotia’s sister/brother, while leaving NB and NS as a couple and I’ve always wondered what made them that different from Prince Ed for other people. 

Obviously I’m not a Maritimer, and I do tend to have my reading of the history shaped by what people have done in the past so I can absolutely see that there’s ambiguity in those relationships. I can’t speak for Sherry’s interpretations, I can only attempt to justify them in my own readings. I did get the sense that PEI has a very strong little sibling vibe i.e. the strong independence streak without wanting the responsibility, but I can read NS as the long suffering big brother figure for either of them. I think it’s the strong Scottish heritage that tends to tie NS and PEI together more than NS to NB, but I could be wrong.

As for Alberta and Saskatchewan, I think a lot of people see them as “sister provinces”, me included, and that’s why we usually see them as siblings, without mentionning the project of “Buffalo” ( I think that’s what it was called? Correct me if I’m wrong ).

Buffalo is correct: nowadays we tend to see each other as sister provinces but it can also depend on the reading of the history- Wilfrid Laurier dividing the provinces up can be seen as completely arbitrary with little regard for the people already living there, as an eastern imposition etc, but it rubs me the wrong way to just throw them together because they share a birthday (because I’ve got a personal Dislike of using Confederation as a literal birthday rather than a symbolic birthday and I really don’t like AB/SK portrayed as identical and interchangeable twins (even though lately our politicians have been playing that game loll a story for ANotHER Time). It’s definitely a close relationship that I tend to at least read as adoptive siblings since I’m Not a fan of literal biological relationships- they are definitely the closest out of the former Rupert’s Land territories fam.

For Poutines: I can tell you that when the cheese curds are fresh from today, it’s even better. I live in an area where the milk industry is very big and we’ve got that company called Chalifoux that makes the best cheese curds I’ve ever tasted. A lot of our restaurants use them in their poutines and it’s amazing. I know a few people that prefer shredded cheese but they obviously didn’t taste the best poutine in the region.

Another day another reason to be sad and lactose intolerant ToT and yet i regret nothing

For Alberta: I see that Quebec and Alberta have a very different version of the story. Honestly, I never saw Quebec as a province that tried to bother Alberta, we’re so concentrated on our own politics  that we hardly notice what happens in the rest of the country most of the time. I think the last time I heard about Alberta in the news was during Fort Mac’s wildfires, and a lot happened since it started. But again, we’re so focused on complaining about Phillipe Couillard that we don’t even see what he does, for the most part ( Doesn’t change that he’s a shit PM to me, but that’s a story for another day. ) The only other time I’ve heard about AB in the news was for the pipeline and I can say it’s at that moment that I’ve heard the most people going against the prairies. 

That’s regionalism for you, most of us tend to only focus on our own affairs until the minute someone releases some bad poll data about how much one hates the other online and then everyone goes ballistic. p: Pipelines again are a nuanced issue and while I personally am anti-pipeline i understand the reasons AB doesn’t see it that way, again we just got over a long 44 year political dynasty headed straight towards economic dependence on a single resource that our current government is trying to undo, and frankly it’s overly simplistic to just paint us as the bad guys because we’ve made some dumb decisions and backed ourselves into a corner here. We’re dumb, we get it, but don’t say it to our faces lol. Again if you are interested in this stuff I try to reblog news articles frequently on my personal blog under the yeah y yeah alberta tag  (my political bias is Obvious)

The other part of the story is the federal government is built on pitting regions of Canada against each other, and right now the West is the favourite scapegoat. Former PM Harper did not help our image at all in the 2000s-2010s and I take IMMENSE satisfaction knowing that he’s now got to answer to a Muslim mayor and a New Democrat premier, you have no idea. But it’s fear mongering like that where ohhh the west is all about oiiillll and then ignoring the history of Eastern Canada literally just taking it from us and the federal government making it our current major export etc etc is really hypocritical at best (the scapegoating Alberta for the oil and saying ohhh it’s so baaad and unenvironmental and then wanting to live off the profits is something that really is an easy way to piss us off, and the federal government does it all the time. 

We really saw Alberta and Saskatchewan as the big bad guys and a girl I knew started to DESPISE the provinces, even though she also hated Quebec? ( She’s the one we had drama with when creating our version of the provinces, she hated Alberta so much that she wanted my character to die… That’s a lot of hatred, but that is also a story for another day. ) I think a lot of Quebeckers are not over that yet, it’s probably time for us to go complain about something else than that ahah.

This is one of those touchy subjects and it Really Pisses me Off when people like to use aph Alberta OCs as their stereotypical villain character without ever considering our perspective or history, it’s happened enough that I’ve not been seeking out ocs for my province anymore for that reason. We already get that enough in mainstream politics, and all it does is make us angrier and act even more out of spite. I’ve seen Quebec and Ontario both treated the same way, of course, but QUON is such a popular pairing that more often than not its just Oh here is Loud Obnoxious Alberta Here To Ruin Everything for Us Once Again. They’re all such good and nuanced characters that it makes me real sad to see them reduced like that. I’ve always seen the relationship as playful banter/teasing between the three of us (and really four because BC is up there with us) and I kind of feel partially responsible for my adlibbing in old IAMP episodes being taken Too Seriously.

Also hating a character is once thing, hating them to wanting them to die is beyond rude, and hating an aph oc for representing a place with real people is Beyond offensive to me, sigh... 

For French: I can get why a lot of people complain about having to learn it, it’s a hard language, even for native speakers. We’re also guilty of blaming the “anglos” for making us learn English. I do see how Quebec and Ontario look like they have been working together, but we don’t see it from inside Quebec, since we complain about Ontario as much as we complain about the rest of the provinces ( Ontario is actually our biggest target, it’s easy to do, since we’re so close. ) I don’t mind people complaining about French outside of Quebec, but it’s when people do it inside the province that it bothers me. I already see so many people choosing to speak English instead of French, thus loosing what’s supposed to be their native tongue that I and a lot of other people get on the defensive when we talk about language issues, like when we don’t know what language to speak in in Montreal. Remember when I talked about Phillipe Couillard? Well, he recently asked for English people to come back in the province and I can tell you that it wasn’t welcomed as a good thing by most Quebeckers… ( I could rant about Couillard for hours but I think it’s better if I stop it there) We’re welcoming of tourists but when we hear them complain about how everything’s written in French, it’s at that moment that we get a lot more like the stereotype.I would love to visit one day, and maybe these English class will finally be useful somewhere else than on the internet ahah

(of course once again see Amy’s response above for the western perspective on this issue) 

there’s a lot of common jokes that the only unifying thing about canada is everyone’s hatred of ontario and that the best thing to solve everyone’s problems would be if ontario were to separate and leave the rest of canada alone xDD but of course at the end of the day it’s still nothing personal and as much as I can’t quell the Stereotypical Albertan gut reaction to shake my fist at all things Ontarian, I am very fond of this place and have been treated exceedingly well whenever I’ve visited and I hope my good fortune will continue. But of course I understand wanting to protect French within Quebec, and I do really wish it was a more accessible language in other parts of Canada. But yeah, travel, education, all that gives me hope for the future (too bad Canada is so Damn Big or I’d be all over it already). 

[blinskiyartgang-blog]

Exhibition FR-UKR Discuss #1 is an international art exhibition project which took place at Centre Culturel Ukrainien ( 22 rue de Messine, Paris ), project hosted by Irena Karpa, first secretary of Cultural Affairs of Ministry of Ukraine, we worked on this project like guest curator with Ivan Samokrutkin. The exhibition was cancelled with violence on friday 2nd of June 2017, two days after the official opening, and one week before official end as announced on Ambassade of Ukraine website. We understand this like a form of censorship. As we wait for official explanations, you can contact us by mail if you want to have details about this incident. 

Presentation of the Exhibition (french/ukrainian language)

Fr- Ukr discuss # 1 Première exposition d'un cycle de rencontres et d'expositions franco ukrainiennes par l'Ambassade d'Ukraine en France / Посольство України у Франції Un des projets de cette exposition est d'explorer les scènes artistiques indépendantes en Ukraine et en France, à travers un prisme dont voici les différentes faces : des pratiques artistiques différentes / des contextes de production et de réception différents / une réalité mondiale commune , traversée par des courants et des esthétiques familières et informées les unes des autres / internet et la documentation-dissémination de l'oeuvre / la pluralité des marchés de l'art et leur hermétisme / identification locale et nomadisme La réunion des ces œuvres en ce lieu permet d'aborder la question de l'identification de certains artistes à la scène artistique ukrainienne, et leur marginalisation après la révolution. L'espace public comme atelier est un numérateur commun à la plupart des œuvres présentées, du jardin au web, de la carte au territoire. Одним із завдань цієї виставки є дослідження незалежної мистецької сцени в Україні і у Франції через призму різноманітних практик, контекстів виробництва та сприйняття глядачем. Спільна світова реальність, перетята знайомими естетичним течіями, що впливають на форму одні одних. Інтернетне та документальне поширення творів. Множинність та герметичність арт-ринків. Вкоріненння чи кочовий спосіб життя. Зібрання цих творів в одному місці ставить питання ідентичності окремих митців української сцени, їхній поступ чи марґіналізацію після революції. Громадський простір як майстерня – це спільний знаменник для більшості презентованих творів, від саду до інтернет-простору, від карти до території. Arzhel Prioul vit et travaille à Rennes http://mardinoir.blogspot.fr/ Intervention in situ/ 2D/ Couleur / Semiologie/ Peinture/ Iconologie/ Géopolitique Intervention in situ/ 2D/ Colour / Semiology / Painting / Iconology/ Geopolitic Elsa Quintin/ Le dessin observé vit et travaille à Rennes/Odessa ledessinobserve.tumblr.com Dessin/ Musique électronique/ Performance/ Sampling Drawing/ Electronic Music/ Performance/ Sampling Emmanuel Perraud vit et travaille à Rennes https://www.instagram.com/fzr_7/ Duplication/ Répétition/ Process/ Volume/ Espace Duplication/ Repetition/ Process/ Volume/ Espace Eugor vit et travaille à Odessa https://www.instagram.com/eugor1996/ Eugor/ Giorgi Gangalove vit et travaille à Odessa https://www.facebook.com/GiorgiGangalove Graphics/ Insitu/ Serial Maya Kolesnik vit et travaille à Lyon/Odessa http://mayakolesnik.com/ Mixed media/ Open form/ papier surface MNPL Workshop art-group vit et travaille à Odessa http://mnplworkshop.tumblr.com/ Mnpl/ Sarah Montet vit et travaille à Paris cargocollective.com/sarahmontet Cyber culture/ Romantisme gothique/ Techno et archéologie Cyber culture /Goth Romantism/ Techno and archaelogy Vincent Capmartin vit et travaille à Paris www.vincentcapmartin.com Jardin Contemporain/ Paysage/ Espace/ Design / Mobilier Contemporary Garden/ Landscape/ Space/ Design / Furniture Viktor Markov vivait et travaillait à Odessa Graphics/ Naive/ Serie Zabrodskyi Maksim vit et travaille à Kiev Traditional Art / Graphics/ Canvas/ Oil/ Drawing curated by ^ Karpa Irena - First Secretary for Culture of the Embassy of Ukraine in France. Ambassade d'Ukraine en France / Посольство України у Франції project curation by^ Ваня Самокруткин and Quintin Elsa artwork by Lesha Mykhailov

[impressivepress]

When Charlie Chaplin met Pablo Picasso: How a war of egos took place in Paris

Cultural titans, left-wing darlings - but how did Pablo and Charlie get on when they finally met?

Today, Pablo Picasso is rarely out of the news. Tickets must be booked long in advance for the brilliantly refurbished Picasso Museum in Paris, and his works command surreal prices at auction. (Last year, a version of his Women of Algiers set a new world record when it sold at Christie's in New York for $179m.) We hear rather less of Charles Chaplin: the last time his hat and cane were sold at auction, they raised a mere $40,000. But if, in 1952, we had been invited to nominate two world-famous artistic geniuses, still active and thriving, whom we would have liked to find together in the same room, Chaplin and Picasso might well have fitted the bill. But while Chaplin's early, silent films were still shown and adored across the world, Picasso's fame at that time was more problematic.

Already he was sought-after by museums and collectors, but the public regarded him with suspicion or hostility – too modern, too ugly, too in-your-face, as the master of Cubism somersaulted from one baffling style to the next. And while both he and Chaplin had lauded Stalin's Russia, Picasso had recently been condemned by Moscow's academicians and museum curators as "formalistic", "decadent", "bourgeois" and "anti-human". His blood boiled silently, while his celebrated Dove of Peace extended its wings from Moscow to Peking.

Many might assume that Picasso and Chaplin, both born in the 1880s, the "maître" and the "maestro", had little else in common beyond brilliant careers, fame and wealth. Indeed, they could not exchange even an insult in the same language. So what could bring them together? More than might be supposed, and culminating in a celebratory meeting between two inflated egos in Picasso's vast studio in the rue des Grands Augustins, Paris – a collision we shall presently attend, uninvited.

Their two careers had pursued contrasting trajectories. Whereas the supremely self-confident Picasso had remained entire master of his own change of styles during an output spanning five decades, Chaplin by contrast had been confronted by a potentially terminal crisis when silent films such as his The Gold Rush gave way to "talkies". He had to remodel himself as an actor-director in the 1930s – and he did, coming up with such works of genius as Modern Times and The Great Dictator. He had discovered a way of remaining true to himself, always the ridiculous yet captivating clown, while injecting social and political commitment into modern cinema. But what most obviously linked Picasso to Chaplin was an aggressively left-wing outlook, sympathetic to Soviet Russia and scornful of Western "warmongers".

And as such, both were outsiders, heretics.

Having publicly supported the Soviet Union during the war, calling for a second front to take the Hitlerite pressure off the Red Army, Chaplin then backed the abortive US presidential campaign of Henry A Wallace, leader of the Progressive Party. In 1949 he put in a prominent appearance at the fellow-travelling Waldorf Conference in New York, a scene of bitter, Cold-War recriminations. As a result, Chaplin (who had never forfeited his British citizenship) was cordially detested by large swaths of the American public.

Picasso, too, had declined citizenship in his adopted country. When the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940, he stayed put. His native Spain was closed to him by Franco's victory in the Spanish Civil War, and by Picasso's famous pictorial lament Guernica, a huge, expressionist canvas of massacre and misery commemorating the fascist air attack on a Republican town. (That the work now hung in New York's Museum of Modern Art was also considered a scandal in the age of Senator Joseph McCarthy.)

Another thing Chaplin and Picasso had in common was short stature combined with Napoleonic energy. Capitalising on his small, slender frame on screen, his stick held by elastic, Chaplin was sensitive about it in public: the women in his life were not allowed to wear high heels. He was also a snob of sorts. His autobiography chokes on the names of all the famous people he had known or met for a handshake. George Bernard Shaw? HG Wells? Of course. Mahatma Gandhi? Einstein and Eisenstein? No problem. Churchill headed the list, followed by Roosevelt.

Chaplin was proud that Hitler himself had banned The Great Dictator (although he seems to have been unaware that Stalin had suppressed the same film just in case the scenes of Nazi mass adulation reminded Soviet audiences that the first man to stop applauding a speech by the Great Helmsman Stalin was a dead man). Chaplin did know, however, that Modern Times had been rejected by Russia, ostensibly because it was weak on socialism (true), but in reality because the film inadvertently confirmed that even demon capitalists provided washrooms and served three-course lunches on trays to their oppressed workers.

Indeed, one illustrious hand was missing from the list of those shaken by Chaplin – Stalin's. Chaplin had never visited the USSR and Stalin had rarely stepped out of it. So there we have a cruel paradox: both Chaplin and Picasso admired the Soviet Union and "Uncle Joe", but their work could not be shown there.

Both the maître and the maestro were notorious womanisers. When they finally met, their mutual passion for young women might well have driven them apart after Picasso took a fancy to Chaplin's fourth American wife Oona O'Neill and threatened to cuckold him – a pledge luckily lost to the language barrier. In puritan America, where the collective voice of women was louder and more litigious, Chaplin's lively sex life had landed him in bitter divorce cases and public opprobrium, culminating in his indictment under the Mann Act, a US federal law that aimed to curb prostitution and "immorality". French public opinion, always more permissive – a man, after all, is a man – had given Picasso an easier ride.

Estranged from his first wife, the Ukrainian-born ballerina Olga Khokhlova, the great artist remained technically married to her from 1918 until her death in 1965, which brought him relief from a lady increasingly inclined to follow him about and harass his mistresses along the seafronts of the South of France. Picasso was a man of many mistresses and muses, including the often-painted Marie Thérèse Walter and the talented photographer-artist Dora Maar, subject of the "weeping woman" portraits. He deserted both when another woman took his fancy. Her name was Françoise Gilot and what he later told her about his rendezvous with Chaplin gives us his version of their meeting. (Chaplin's has yet to be found.)

According to Picasso, Chaplin, who was heading for London with his family in September 1952, was totally focused on the launch and promotion of his new film Limelight, successor to Monsieur Verdoux, a dark comedy more popular with French audiences than American. Set in London in 1914, Limelight almost chokes on pathos and nostalgia. It portrays the decline of Calvero (Chaplin), once a famous stage clown but now a washed-up drunk. Rescuing a despairing young dancer (Claire Bloom) from suicide, he devotes his dwindling energies to reviving her dancing career. Deeply grateful, she is willing to marry the haggard old man, but Calvero altruistically delivers her into the arms of the young composer (Sydney Earl Chaplin, the director's son) whom she loves. The swelling and sobbing theme music is as much a tear-jerker as the story itself.

But Chaplin's popularity was at a low ebb in the US. Persecuted by the FBI, the Catholic War Veterans and the Hearst newspapers, he was now faced with a virtual boycott of the film by the most powerful cinema chains. And his situation, as he headed by sea for London, was worsened by news that US Attorney General James P McGranery, a strong Catholic, had issued a statement threatening to ban Chaplin from returning to America, accusing him of "making statements that would indicate a leering, sneering attitude toward a country whose hospitality has enriched him". Chaplin might never get back to his home in California, his accumulated wealth and his film studio.

At Cherbourg, reporters swarmed aboard the liner; they swarmed again when Chaplin, absent from London for 21 years, moved into his Savoy penthouse suite. The hard voices of the Hearst Press challenged his politics and his sex life. Why had he never applied for American citizenship, they asked? Was he guilty of tax avoidance? What did he have to say about Charles Skouras's decision to ban Limelight from his movie theatres? Had he been invited to visit Russia by Stalin? Naturally, Chaplin hit back, sometimes wittily. Asked whether he had ever committed adultery, he quipped: "An FBI agent visited our home and asked that question. I said no – did he recommend it?"

The next morning he smilingly toured Covent Garden vegetable market in the company of Claire Bloom, currently Juliet at the Old Vic (and tactfully wearing flat shoes), while Cockney porters saluted him. Come the premiere of Limelight in Leicester Square, he stood in the receiving line to greet Princess Margaret, then headed to a dinner at the Mansion House, hosted by the Lord Mayor, where Charlie raised a cheer from the white ties and silk gowns by describing England as "my country". (The next day, The Times pointed out that Mr Chaplin was not inclined to settle for the draconian taxes endured by the rich who chose to reside in "his" country.) And now the Chaplins headed for Paris and Pablo Picasso.

Regarded tolerantly by the French public as, at worst, an exhibitionistic maverick, Picasso's situation was more secure than Chaplin's. Having joined the Communist Party in 1944 after the Liberation of Paris, eight years later he remained the jewel in the Party's cultural crown. In the cause of the Peace Movement, he had even allowed himself to be dragged to a conference in Sheffield. (He later reported that he almost died of cold and didn't find anything he could eat for two days – "It's a mystery how the English take their clothes off long enough to procreate," he told comrades.) For the newspaper l'Humanité he produced a touching sketch of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, imprisoned then executed for atomic espionage. He also came up with a strangely displaced canvas, Massacre in Korea, depicting semi-medieval robots mowing down women and children.

Picasso's misgivings about Soviet Russia were jealously kept under the carpet by the French Party. But he could not forget the relentless denigration of his work – "dismembering humanity" – in the Soviet press. The Russians had locked away in cellars their rich collection of Picasso's early works purchased before the revolution by the wealthy collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov. (Jean-Paul Sartre ironically described "the nausea of the Soviet boa constrictor, unable to keep down or vomit up the enormous Picasso".) That was why, according to the histories and biographies, Picasso rejected all invitations to visit Moscow in the cause of "peace". Even in 1956, when the Pushkin Museum finally staged a retrospective of his early work – hugely attended by a curiosity-driven Soviet pubic enjoying the post-Stalin "thaw" – he failed to turn up.

But back to Chaplin: here he is arriving in Paris for the French premiere of Limelight, celebrated by dinner with President Auriol, the award of the Legion d'Honneur and a grand visit to the Opera. The Left rallies: Chaplin is not to be abducted by the reactionary state. The leading Communist writer Louis Aragon, fluent in English, arranges a first meeting between Chaplin and Picasso at a dinner attended by Sartre. Chaplin tells Picasso, "I am a great fan of yours", an excusable exaggeration.

From this emerges the invitation to Picasso's studio, so Chaplin brings Oona by limousine to the rue des Grands Augustins. Knowing no more of the French language than Chaplin, she is beautiful, radiant, affable. Le tout Paris, invited or not, presses into the capacious studio with its stacks of canvases. Aragon explains to Chaplin how much Picasso admires his films, notably the rapid, deft way that the villainous Monsieur Verdoux flips through the pages of a telephone directory in search of new female victims – and the way he counts their money after disposing of them. Meanwhile, Aragon's Russian-born wife, the writer Elsa Triolet, explains to Oona how Pablo had tried to count his own money as rapidly as Monsieur Verdoux: "He made more and more mistakes and there were more recounts."

Oona is puzzled: doesn't Picasso know about banks? Triolet replies: "Pablo has always carried around with him an old red-leather trunk from Hermès in which he keeps five or six million francs. He calls it 'cigarette money'." Oona wonders whether he should smoke so much, while Chaplin beams genially: "As Henry Ford once remarked to me, a man who knows how much he's worth isn't worth much."

Carefully kept from the Chaplins by Aragon and Triolet is the fact that Picasso, taken to view Limelight, had come away distempered. "I don't care for the maudlin, sentimentalising side of Charlot [Charlie]," he had complained on leaving the cinema. "That's for shop girls. It's hand-me-down threadbare romanticism and it's just bad literature."

In fact, Picasso was incensed to witness Chaplin's ageing Calvero sacrificing himself sexually by handing over the heroine to a younger man. Picasso says he would rather let a beautiful young woman die than see her happy with someone else. (His own struggle with virility is relentless.) The Chaplins, meanwhile, merely peck at the culinary delicacies on offer – are these snails or something?

Chaplin satirising Hitler in ‘The Great Dictator’ The packed room falls silent as Picasso instructs Aragon to convey to Charlot the profound thought that both he and Chaplin are masters of the silent gesture, "no description, no analysis, no words". Chaplin nods, bemused – Limelight is fully scripted (inevitably by Chaplin) and Picasso may be indicating an adverse opinion about Chaplin's work since the silent cinema. Chaplin responds, to general delight, by lifting the hat he is not wearing, wriggling his eyebrows and twiddling an invisible moustache. He then launches into the dance with the rolls from the New Year's Eve sequence in The Gold Rush. Huge applause. Picasso beams with delight.

Later, he and Charlot will closet themselves alone in the bathroom to practice the clown's inimitable shaving routine. And when they emerge, Oona – not so cautious about the flowing wine as about the snails – now stands herself back-to-back with Charlie, bends her knees, and giggles: "See? Charlie's taller."

"Moi aussi! I try!" roars Picasso, aflame. Oona obliges him, by no means coyly, again bending at the knee and maybe (accounts differ) playfully butting his bottom.

Much aroused, Picasso turns to Aragon. "Tell Charlot I wouldn't want to insult him by not desiring his wife. Tell him only a very wealthy friend is worth cuckolding." But this does not reach Chaplin. Aragon has abruptly forgotten his English.

The Chaplins departed for Rome and London with the McGranery cloud darkening their lives: Charlie's acceptance of permanent exile from America meant sending Oona home to California on a desperate mission to recover and transfer what may be called the crown jewels, not forgetting to close the family mansion and dismiss the faithful servants. This she bravely did.

The histories and biographies inform us that the Chaplins then headed for Switzerland to find a mansion suitable for a long exile. But a historian I know well believes they first spent two weeks in Moscow, along with Picasso, Aragon and Triolet as part of the Stalin birthday celebrations. According to my newly discovered evidence, the expedition turned into a highly dramatic, multiple disaster; but into this story I do not venture here. Some may unwisely call it "counter-factual" or even mere fiction.

[watchilove]

On Monday May 20th 2019, with the 72nd edition of the Cannes Film Festival in full swing, Christophe Claret organized an evening event at the splendid Miramar Hotel in Théoule-sur-Mer, a few minutes from the famous red carpet. Several stars from Hollywood attended the event such as the actress, Rose McGowan. During the cocktail, Christophe Claret officialized its partnership with the Ukrainian boxer Vasyl Lomachenko – winner of one Europe championship title, two Olympic gold medals and three World championship titles – and presented the Loma watch, a mono-pusher chronograph with cathedral-gong striking mechanism and constant force escapement. Born of the collaboration between the watchmaker and the boxer and uniting their shared passions, this watch will be available on the markets from September.

https://vimeo.com/342227545

Precision, Rigorous Discipline, Patience, Speed, Elegance and Talent are the shared qualities demonstrated by these two Maestros in their respective arts.

Christophe Claret Loma launch

It was on April 12th 2019 that Christophe Claret first met Vasyl Lomachenko in Los Angeles through Saïd Taghmaoui, a famous Franco-American actor who made his breakout in the film La Haine in 1996 and has been the Christophe Claret brand Ambassador since January 2019.

A few hours before their encounter, Vasyl Lomachenko, nicknamed the “Picasso” of world boxing, had achieved yet another masterful feat. In his Los Angeles fight against Englishman Anthony Crolla, Vasyl Lomachenko successfully defended his WBA and WBO lightweight belts by beating his opponent with a spectacular knockout in the fourth round. The Ukrainian boxer had already won the title of Europe champion in Liverpool (2008) in the featherweight category, the title of double Olympic champion – in Beijing (2008) in the featherweight category and in London (2012) in the lightweight category – as well as three World titles in only 12 professional fights: in Chicago (2007) and in Milan (2009) in the featherweight category and in Baku (2011) in the lightweight category.

https://vimeo.com/342196765

This alliance between Christophe Claret and “Loma” is no coincidence. In 2013 already, Christophe Claret drew inspiration from the world of boxing based on a simple observation: the ringside boxing bell is one of the most recognizable sounds in sport, signalling the moment boxers go head to head in the ring. A boxing bout is divided into rounds, punctuated by one-minute periods of rest, all announced by the ringside bell. So it’s only natural to mark the start of a chronograph with such a sound. This led to the creation of the Kantharos model – a mono-pusher chronograph with constant force escapement and cathedral-gong striking mechanism, equipped with an ingenious chiming system activated in each mode (start, stop, reset) – that also inspired Christophe Claret in creating the Loma watch.

Christophe Claret Loma

This new round embodying a rapprochement between Haute Horlogerie and boxing is set to pack a powerful punch!

Christophe Claret Loma

Christophe Claret Loma launch

Christophe Claret Loma launch with Vasyl Lomachenko

Christophe Claret unveils the Loma watch On Monday May 20th 2019, with the 72nd edition of the Cannes Film Festival in full swing, …

[fematrend]

How CR7’s first season ranks with Maradona, Ronaldo & Serie A’s other superstars

The Portuguese has enjoyed a fine debut campaign in Turin but has any other player ever made such an instantaneous impact on Italian football?

Cristiano Ronaldo has enjoyed a successful start to his Italian adventure.

The Portuguese's first season in Turin wasn't without its disappointments, chief among them Juventus' shock elimination at the quarter-final stage of the Champions League by Ajax.

However, Ronaldo could hardly be held accountable in that regard, given they wouldn't have even made it that far without him, with the forward netting a hat-trick in Juve's stirring second-leg comeback against Atletico Madrid in the last 16.

Indeed, the fact that no other Bianconero scored in the knockout stage underlined just how important CR7 has already become to the Old Lady.

Of course, an eighth consecutive Scudetto was always likely, even before Ronaldo's arrival, but he played a pivotal role in their triumph, racking up 21 goals and eight assists.

Those numbers may not have been enough to finish as Capocannoniere but they did result in him being voted Player of the Season, thus making him the first man to win the accolade in Serie A, La Liga and the Premier League.

So, with that in mind, Goal has decided to back through the history books to see if any overseas superstar has ever made such an instantaneous impact on the Italian game...

Gabriel Batistuta

After successful spells with both River Plate and Boca Juniors, Gabriel Batistuta secured a move to Fiorentina in 1991 after firing Argentina to Copa America glory with six goals. 

The striker initially found goals hard to come by at the Artemio Franchi, netting only three times by the end of December, but he ended his first season in Serie A with a creditable 13, as a weak Viola side finished 12th.

'Batigol', as he came to be known, struck 16 times during his second campaign but that was not enough to save Fiorentina from the drop. 

However, even though Batistuta had established himself as one of the top strikers in Serie A, he resisted offers from elsewhere to help the club secure an immediate return to the top flight, thus earning himself iconic status in Florence.

Batistuta continued to score freely for Fiorentina but despite some near misses, it was only after leaving to join Roma in 2000 that he won a long overdue Scudetto.

Ruud Gullit

AC Milan broke the transfer fee world record in 1987 by signing Ruud Gullit from PSV for approximately £6 million but the Dutchman took time to settle at San Siro, struggling with the Italian language and only scoring two goals during the first half of the season.

However, the forward improved from January onwards, and ended up with nine goals to his name as the Rossoneri claimed their first Scudetto since 1979.

Despite some injury issues, Gullit would go on to become a legend at Milan, whom he helped win back to back European Cups, even scoring twice in the 1989 final against Steaua Bucharest.

Kaka

Despite widespread interest in Kaka's services, AC Milan managed to snap up the Sao Paulo star for just €8.5m (£7.5m/$9.5m), which president Silvio Berlusconi rather prophetically described as "peanuts"!

The attacking midfielder was the revelation of the 2003-04 Serie A season. Kaka had only scored twice by the winter break but he was proving a wonderful creative force, replacing Rui Costa in the starting line-up, and the goals began to flow in the New Year.

Indeed, he ended his debut campaign with 10 in total and was named Serie A Player of the Year for playing such a pivotal role in Milan's title triumph. 

Kaka would go on to become one of the finest players ever to grace Italy's top flight, capping a sensational first spell at San Siro by winning the Ballon d'Or after inspiring the Rossoneri to Champions League glory in 2007.

Diego Maradona

If Ronaldo's decision to join Juve was a surprise, Diego Maradona's move to Napoli rocked the footballing world to its very core.

The Partenopei had never even won the Scudetto yet managed to sign the Argentine for a world-record fee from Barcelona in 1984.

Maradona was greeted as a messiah in Naples and certainly achieved God-like status by leading Napoli to two Serie A title triumphs during his six-year stay at the San Paolo.

He did take time to prove his worth, netting only three times during the first half of his debut season, but that was hardly surprising, given he joined a team coming off the back of a 12th-placed finish.

However, he soon made his genius felt and ended his first campaign in Italywith 14 goals, which saw him rank third in the race for the Capocannoniere, just four behind victor Michel Platini. 

Michel Platini

Juventus took advantage of the expiration of Michel Platini's contract with Saint-Etienne to sign one of the stars of the 1982 World Cup for a nominal fee in the region of €129,000.

Even at the time, it was a steal. As Juve president Gianni Agnelli famously put it, "We've paid for a slice of bread (an idiom for 'pittance' in Italian) and they've given us foie gras!"

He wasn't wrong either.

Platini started slowly in Turin, only striking four times by Christmas. However, the France No.10 finished with 16 goals to take the first of three consecutive Capocannoniere awards, and three consecutive Ballons d'Or.

Essentially, Ronaldo still has some way to go to emulate Platini's achievements in Turin!

Ronaldo

Inter took advantage of the breakdown in Barcelona's talks with Ronaldo's representatives over a new contract to make the Brazilian sensation the most expensive player in the world for the second time in just over a year, paying £19.5m ($27m) for his services.

The striker had terrorised defences in his one and only season at Camp Nou but he actually looked an even more complete forward at San Siro, quickly earning himself the nickname 'Il Fenomeno' for his goalscoring exploits.

Ronaldo struck nine times by the end of December but added 16 during the second half of the season to finish with 25 in total, claiming the Serie A Player of the Year award in the process.

Sadly, that was to be as good as it got for Ronaldo at Inter because he suffered two serious knee injuries which meant he spent more time on the sidelines than on the pitch during his remaining four years at San Siro.

Frustratingly for Inter, he departed for Real Madrid just after finding full fitness – and his very best form – while firing Brazil to World Cup glory in 2002.

Andriy Shevchenko

The big question hanging over Andriy Shevchenko after his move to AC Milanin 1999 was whether he could replicate his impressive goalscoring feats at Dynamo Kyiv. 

The Ukrainian posted an immediate response, netting seven times in his first seven Serie A appearances as he went about reaching the winter break with 10 goals to his name.

The striker proved even more prolific in the second half of the season as he finished with 24 goals to not only win the Scudetto for the Rossoneri, but also claim the Capocannoniere award in his first year at San Siro.

Shevchenko went on to become the second most prolific player in Milan's history and is rightly remembered as a club legend despite leaving for Chelseain 2006 only to then return for an unsuccessful loan spell two years later.

Marco van Basten

Marco van Basten's Serie A career got off to the perfect start with the Dutch striker netting on his debut, in a 3-1 win at Pisa, but his first campaign was decimated by injury and he contributed just three goals in total to AC Milan's 1987-88 title triumph.

Once fully fit, though, Van Basten took the league by storm, racking up 19 goals in his second season at San Siro, and a further 10 during the Rossoneri's European Cup triumph, including a double in the final against Steaua Bucharest. 

Van Basten subsequently proved himself one of the greatest centre-forwards the game has ever seen but, cruelly, he was forced to retire in 1995, aged just 31, after spending the previous two years sidelined by injury.

George Weah

Having earned a reputation as one of the most fearsome strikers in world football at Paris Saint-Germain, George Weah was snapped up by Italian giants AC Milan in the summer of 1995.

The Liberian only scored 11 goals in his debut season in Serie A but that was enough for him to finish top scorer for a title-winning Rossoneri side that boasted forwards of the calibre of Marco Simone, Dejan Savicevic and Roberto Baggio. 

Weah's all-round excellence also resulted in him becoming the first African to win the Ballon d'Or. 

He would enjoy a more prolific campaign in 1995-96, scoring 13 goals – including his iconic coast-to-coast strike against Verona – and he claimed a second Scudetto in 1999 but his first season in Serie A was undoubtedly his most impactful.

Zico

Despite interest from AC Milan and Roma, Brazilian superstar Zico joined lowly Udinese in 1983.

Many were mystified as to how the Zebrette had managed to stump up the cash to sign the outstanding talent from the ridiculously gifted Selecao side that had graced the World Cup in Spain the previous year.

However, despite calls for the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) to block the transfer, the No.10 was allowed to join Udinese, much to the joy and disbelief of their supporters.

Zico hit the ground running, netting six times in his opening four games, and had racked up nine goals by the turn of the year. 

He eventually ended with 19 goals in Serie A but was beaten to the Capocannoniere award by Platini by a single strike.

Despite Zico's brilliance, and his productive partnership with Franco Causio, Udinese only finished ninth on account of their porous defence.

Zico's second season was worse, with Udinese coming home 12th, but he remains a legend in Udine, not least for turning the free-kick into an art-form.

Zinedine Zidane

Amusingly, Blackburn Rovers turned down the chance to sign Zinedine Zidane because they already had Tim Sherwood, while Newcastle didn't think that the elegant Frenchman was good enough to play in the First Division – let alone the Premier League.

That left the way clear for Juventus to sign Zidane in the summer of 1996 for just €3.6m (£3.2m/$4m) and it quickly became obvious that the Bianconeri had got themselves a bargain. 

The attacking midfielder was excellent in his first season in Turin. Never a prolific player, Zidane only scored five times in total but he was the majestic creative force behind Juve's Scudetto win and was unsurprisingly named Serie A's Foreign Player of the Year.

He also netted twice in the knockout stages of the Champions League as Juve reached the final, only to suffer a shock loss to Borussia Dortmund. 

Zidane was even better in his second season in Italy and he helped the Bianconeri retain the Scudetto but they again suffered heartbreak in Europe, beaten by Real Madrid in the 1998 Champions League final.

As it transpired, it would only be after joining the Spanish giants for a world-record fee in 2001 that Zidane would finally get his hands on the European Cup, in 2002.

More work to do for Ronaldo

So, in terms of goals, Ronaldo should be rightly proud of his first season in Serie A. He has outscored some illustrious names but not his Brazilian namesake.

Context is also key. Whereas the Portuguese Ronaldo has joined an utterly dominant Juventus side during a relatively poor era for Italian football, the likes of Gullit and Weah played in its golden age, when defences ruled and it was, thus, far harder for forwards to score goals.

In addition, when one considers the achievements and impact made by the likes of Platini and Maradona, it's clear that Ronaldo still has more work to do if he is to go down as the greatest overseas superstar the Italian game has ever seen.

via Blogger http://bit.ly/2HXpRVt

[computerguideworld-blog]

Why Save A Computer Virus?

New Post has been published on https://computerguideto.com/must-see/why-save-a-computer-virus/

Why Save A Computer Virus?

On average, 82,000 new malware threats are created each day. These include all sorts of malicious software like computer viruses, computer worms and ransomware. Some are pranks or minor annoyances; others seek to pilfer data or extort money. Malware has been used to steal sensitive emails from political parties, or even as weapons directed at civilian, government or military targets.

Malware has been called a pervasive feature of the internet by the head of the British Librarys digital preservation team. A multi-billion-dollar industry exists to control its spread. Though it is part of the texture of digital life, libraries, museums and archives tasked with preserving the past are not saving malware for future generations. They are likely (and rightly) afraid: It can destroy data, which librarians and archivists are bound to protect.

Without long-term preservation, though, viruses and worms themselves will be difficult to analyze, research or write about. Cultural heritage institutions should seek to archive malware in ways that render it safely accessible to researchers and historians.

Our research has addressed two separate but connected concerns: First, how would an institution create a malware archive? And second, how should archivists, who have already encountered malware-infected hard drives and disks in their collections, handle these items? If an archivist chooses to remove the infection, what might we lose? And if the malware is not removed, how can the infected data be stored and accessed safely?

Studying e-infections

A recent history of malware appears in the new film Zero Days, a documentary about the Stuxnet worm that destroyed Iranian nuclear equipment. Zero Days reveals that researchers not only examined Stuxnets code to discover how it worked, but also looked at current geopolitics to determine why it was created.

Without efforts to save code and other items that add context, researchers may lose the ability to conduct similar analysis in the future and to check the work of the past. Information related to historical malware can disappear from the internet. For example, anti-virus firms have removed publicly accessible information about malware from their websites.

In 1988, Robert Morris, a Cornell graduate student, released the first worm to draw widespread attention. Morris’ motivations remain unclear, but some suspect curiosity, hubris or the desire to demonstrate network vulnerabilities.

Since then, malware has been used for many purposes:

As a political statement, such as the WANK worm, released to express political dissent. Today the hacktivist movement includes groups like Anonymous (which has carried out online actions in support of Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movement) and Cult of the Dead Cow (which attempted to interfere with Chinas internet censorship technologies).

To disrupt the rhythms of everyday life, such as ILOVEYOU, which in 2000 infected more than 50 million computers over 10 days. It cost an estimated US$5.5 billion to $8.7 billion in lost time and data recovery expenses. It prompted the Pentagon, the CIA and many corporations to temporarily shut down their email systems.

As artistic expression, such as the Rebel! virus, part of an Italian art installation. Since then, artists like Eva and Franco Mattes (with hacker group Epidemic) and James Hoff have created malware or used malware code in their work.

To affect world conflicts, such as the 2015 Ukrainian conflict, when malware took down part of Ukraines electric grid. The Egyptian government monitored political dissidents’ communications with spyware during the 2011 Arab Spring.

As internet connectivity becomes a feature of home heating and security devices, medical devices and even baby monitors, security experts worry about increasing numbers of malware attacks on this equipment.

An important resource for research

As digital culture scholar Jussi Parikka wrote recently, malware reflects the society in which it arose. In the 1990s, for example, not only were several computer viruses named for AIDS, but computer security professionals used safe sex analogies to explain how to keep electronics virus-free.

Screenshot of a computer infected with the AIDS virus (released circa 1990).Trlkly/Wikipedia,CC BY-NC-ND

The interactions between malware, culture and history should not be lost. Just as historians have examined FBI wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr.s phone, researchers will want to know if a prominent activist had spyware on their computer and who likely installed it. Dissecting the spyware itself may prove crucial in understanding how the surveillance worked and its ultimate goal.

Literary scholars will want to know if a virus damaged an early draft of an important novel. Malware on a corporate executives computer could be evidence of espionage or a protest against the company.

Who is saving malware?

Computer security companies and security organizations hold the most comprehensive and well-organized collections of malware. However, these collections are not easy for researchers or the general public to browse and were never designed for that use. And these organizations are not required to preserve their collections long-term. Their primary mission is to fight current malware threats. No organization has discarded unique samples yet. But what if the company with the best malware collection suddenly shuttered its doors?

Cultural heritage institutions, on the other hand, exist to keep objects for centuries, sometimes millennia, and make them broadly accessible. They can preserve a historical sample of malware for the future and ensure patrons can easily find and view the items they want to learn about.

Some efforts have already been taken to exhibit malware, including the Malware Museum, Daniel Whites YouTube channel and exhibits at swissnex San Francisco and Frankfurts Museum of Applied Arts. While these endeavors are commendable, they were mostly undertaken as side projects by individuals with other primary responsibilities. And they have displayed only a small number of viruses or worms and focused on their visual effects. None have committed to systematically collecting items that would give the malware further context.

Challenges of preserving malware

Saving and analyzing software often designed to wreak havoc deleting files or launching internet-based attacks presents unique challenges and requires complex solutions.

Even with special precautions (like simulated networks that fool malware into thinking its online), studying malware will become increasingly difficult. Like all software, malware eventually becomes obsolete: One day, no contemporary computers will be able to demonstrate how these programs functioned without emulation or virtualization.

Institutions have not yet begun to face the question of which malware to preserve. Should viruses and worms that infected massive numbers of computers be the primary goal for preservationists? What about malware displaying novel programming techniques, or released in conjunction with offline protest? How can they even begin to evaluate candidates for preservation, given the massive amounts of malware constantly being created?

The work ahead

Working collaboratively, archivists can learn how to appraise the historical value of malware, assess and mitigate the risks of storing it, and document its existence or potential removal.

Any malware collection should aim beyond saving code. It should capture the process of development (which will be difficult as most malware creators prefer to remain anonymous), as well as the sometimes short-lived effects of the infection. For example, archivists can collect oral histories of computer security professionals and, if possible, malware coders. They can also save websites, emails and log files pertaining to an infection.

Already, scholars like Jussi Parikka, Finn Brunton, Eugene Thacker and Alexander Galloway have explored the importance of malware in contemporary communications. Archives, museums and libraries can support future research with well-curated collections.

Highlighting a seldom recognized aspect of computing history, a malware archive could spark the creation of new cultural histories. By preserving malware, we can understand how we got from the Morris worm in 1988 to Stuxnet to Julys Democratic National Committee email hack and beyond.

Howard Besser, Professor of Cinema Studies, New York University and Jonathan Farbowitz, Graduate Student in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation, New York University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Read more: http://www.iflscience.com

[agencecqmi]

Russian dolls, diamonds and large cars, but why and especially who wants to demonize Russian women? - Ukrainian and Russian Bride blog - CQMI dating agency

Today we are tackling the issue of Arte, a Franco-German state media that has long been considered as outside propaganda, more honest, more cultural, but which over time has shown that it can sometimes do much worse than these other competitors... Much worse is this documentary broadcast in 2015, shot in 2014 in Russia.

Antoine Monnier's insight:

Why so many newspaper and media companies demonized russian women ?

[frontproofmedia]

Frontproof Media's 2017 End of the Year Awards: Event of the Year

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By Hector Franco 

Follow @MrHector_Franco !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs'); Follow @Frontproofmedia!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

Published: January 15, 2018

Boxing had many significant moments in the year 2017. There were fights that took place that brought the sport the mainstream exposure it has long sought after. The most anticipated fight in the sport since Floyd Mayweather faced Manny Pacquiao took place in September with Gennady Golovkin defending his middleweight titles against lineal middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez.

Golovkin-Alvarez lived up to the hype behind it at the box office by becoming the third biggest gate in boxing history. On pay-per-view (PPV) the fight did quite well selling 1.3 million PPV buys. However, the fight was marred by incompetent judging leaving more fans talking about the scoring of the fight than the action that took place inside the ring. Moreover, while Golovkin-Alvarez was an entertaining fight fought at the highest level of the sport it was not a great fight in the same class as classics like Leonard-Hagler or even Pavlik-Taylor I. 

2017 also brought fans a crossover bout featuring two of combat sports most loquacious and divisive characters. In August 2017, Floyd Mayweather made his return to the boxing ring after a two-year retirement to face mixed martial arts (MMA) star Conor McGregor in his professional boxing debut. From the fight's announcement, the fight was lambasted and criticized as merely being a circus. All the criticism in the world could not stop the fight from being a pop culture phenomenon. The week leading up to the fight it was the most talked about event in pop culture leading the event to sell a monstrous 4.3 million in PPV buys. Mayweather-McGregor became the second-highest selling PPV in history only behind Mayweather-Pacquiao.

Mayweather-McGregor was financially invincible, and even the fight itself was more entertaining then what most imagined. However, at the end of the night, there was more of a sigh of relief that the fight did not ruin both combat sports rather than fans rejoicing over having watched a great fight. The grand event that became the great fight took place on April 29, 2017. 

Frontproof Media would like to award the heavyweight championship bout between Anthony Joshua (20-0, 20 KOs) and Wladimir Klitschko (64-5, 53 KOs) as the event of the year for 2017. Joshua-Klitschko was a worldwide event that was broadcast in 45 countries setting a United Kingdom PPV record at 1.2 million buys. The fight also took place at Wembley Stadium in London, England in front of 90,000 fans. Joshua-Klitschko was also one of the few events where rival cable networks Showtime and HBO worked together. Showtime showed the live broadcast of the bout and HBO showed the tape delay later in the day. 

The fight itself featured four knockdowns with Klitschko going down once in the fifth round and twice in the eleventh round. The Ukrainian future Hall-of-Famer scored a knockdown in the sixth round and came close to stopping a tired Joshua. The bout was action-packed with changes in momentum featuring a definitive ending with Joshua stopping Klitschko in the eleventh round.

The aftermath of the bout brought boxing mainstream attention for all the right reasons. Joshua-Klitschko was a grand statement to the rest of the sports world that boxing was not close to death but thriving on an international level. Joshua-Klitschko wins the event of the year for showcasing that boxing at it is best is the most exciting sport in the world.

Runner-Ups: 

Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor

Saul "Canelo" Alvarez vs. Gennady "GGG" Golovkin

Top Rank-ESPN Deal

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.7

351 – The Jewish revolt against Constantius Gallus breaks out. After his arrival at Antioch, the Jews begin a rebellion in Palestine. 558 – In Constantinople, the dome of the Hagia Sophia collapses. Justinian I immediately orders that the dome be rebuilt. 1274 – In France, the Second Council of Lyon opens to regulate the election of the Pope. 1429 – Joan of Arc ends the Siege of Orléans, pulling an arrow from her own shoulder and returning, wounded, to lead the final charge. The victory marks a turning point in the Hundred Years' War. 1487 – The Siege of Málaga commences during the Spanish Reconquista. 1664 – Louis XIV of France begins construction of the Palace of Versailles. 1685 – Battle of Vrtijeljka between rebels and Ottoman forces. 1697 – Stockholm's royal castle (dating back to medieval times) is destroyed by fire. It is replaced in the 18th century by the current Royal Palace. 1718 – The city of New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. 1763 – Pontiac's War begins with Pontiac's attempt to seize Fort Detroit from the British. 1794 – French Revolution: Robespierre introduces the Cult of the Supreme Being in the National Convention as the new state religion of the French First Republic. 1824 – World premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Vienna, Austria. The performance is conducted by Michael Umlauf under the composer's supervision. 1832 – Greece's independence is recognized by the Treaty of London. 1840 – The Great Natchez Tornado strikes Natchez, Mississippi killing 317 people. It is the second deadliest tornado in United States history. 1846 – The Cambridge Chronicle, America's oldest surviving weekly newspaper, is published for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts 1864 – American Civil War: The Army of the Potomac, under General Ulysses S. Grant, breaks off from the Battle of the Wilderness and moves southwards. 1864 – The world's oldest surviving clipper ship, the City of Adelaide is launched by William Pile, Hay and Co. in Sunderland, England, for transporting passengers and goods between Britain and Australia. 1895 – In Saint Petersburg, Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention, the Popov lightning detector — a primitive radio receiver. In some parts of the former Soviet Union the anniversary of this day is celebrated as Radio Day. 1915 – World War I: German submarine U-20 sinks RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans. Public reaction to the sinking turns many formerly pro-Germans in the United States against the German Empire 1915 – Japanese 21 Demands Ultimatum to China (Commemorated as National Day of Humiliation) 1920 – Kiev Offensive: Polish troops led by Józef Piłsudski and Edward Rydz-Śmigły and assisted by a symbolic Ukrainian force capture Kiev only to be driven out by the Red Army counter-offensive a month later. 1920 – Treaty of Moscow: Soviet Russia recognizes the independence of the Democratic Republic of Georgia only to invade the country six months later. 1920 – The Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, opens the first exhibition by the Group of Seven. 1928 – The Jinan incident begins with Japanese forces killing the Chinese negotiating team in Jinan, China, and going on to kill over 2,000 Chinese civilians in the following days. 1930 – The 7.1 Mw Salmas earthquake shakes northwestern Iran and southeastern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). Up to three-thousand people were killed. 1937 – Spanish Civil War: The German Condor Legion, equipped with Heinkel He 51 biplanes, arrives in Spain to assist Francisco Franco's forces. 1940 – The Norway Debate in the British House of Commons begins, and leads to the replacement of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill three days later. 1942 – During the Battle of the Coral Sea, United States Navy aircraft carrier aircraft attack and sink the Imperial Japanese Navy light aircraft carrier Shōhō; the battle marks the first time in the naval history that two enemy fleets fight without visual contact between warring ships. 1945 – World War II: General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in the war. The document takes effect the next day. 1946 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded with around 20 employees. 1948 – The Council of Europe is founded during the Hague Congress. 1952 – The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey Dummer. 1954 – Indochina War: The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ends in a French defeat and a Vietnamese victory (the battle began on March 13). 1960 – Cold War: U-2 Crisis of 1960: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers. 1976 – Honda Accord officially launched. 1986 – Canadian Patrick Morrow becomes the first person to climb each of the Seven Summits. 1992 – Michigan ratifies a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution making the 27th Amendment law. This amendment bars the U.S. Congress from giving itself a mid-term pay raise. 1992 – The Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on its first mission, STS-49. 1992 – Three employees at a McDonald's Restaurant in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, are brutally murdered and a fourth permanently disabled after a botched robbery. It is the first "fast-food murder" in Canada. 1994 – Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream is recovered undamaged after being stolen from the National Gallery of Norway in February. 1998 – Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for US$40 billion USD and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history. 1999 – Pope John Paul II travels to Romania becoming the first pope to visit a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054. 1999 – Kosovo War: Three Chinese citizens are killed and 20 wounded when a NATO aircraft apparently inadvertently bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Serbia. 1999 – In Guinea-Bissau, President João Bernardo Vieira is ousted in a military coup. 2000 – Vladimir Putin is inaugurated as president of Russia. 2002 – A China Northern Airlines MD-82 plunges into the Yellow Sea, killing 112 people. 2004 – American businessman Nick Berg, is beheaded by Islamic militants. The act is recorded on videotape and released on the Internet. 2007 – Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great south of Jerusalem. 2009 – Over 100 New Zealand police officers begin a 40-hour siege of a lone gunman in Napier.

[arthisour-blog]

Jules Bastien-Lepage (Nov 1, 1848 – Dec 10, 1884) was a French painter closely associated with the beginning of naturalism, an artistic style that emerged from the later phase of the Realist movement.

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Bastien-Lepage was born in the village of Damvillers, Meuse, and spent his childhood there. Bastien’s father grew grapes in a vineyard to support the family. His grandfather also lived in the village; his garden had fruit trees of apple, pear, and peach up against the high walls. Bastien took an early liking to drawing, and his parents fostered his creativity by buying prints of paintings for him to copy.

Jules Bastien-Lepage’s first teacher was his father, himself an artist. His first formal training was at Verdun, and prompted by a love of art he went to Paris in 1867, where he was admitted to the École des Beaux-arts, working under Cabanel. He was awarded first place for drawing but spent most of his time working alone, only occasionally appearing in class. Nevertheless, he completed three years at the école. In a letter to his parents, he complained that the life model was a man in the pose of a mediaeval lutanist. During the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, Bastien fought and was wounded. After the war, he returned home to paint the villagers and recover from his wound. In 1873 he painted his grandfather in the garden, a work that would bring the artist his first success at the Paris Salon.

After exhibiting works in the Salons of 1870 and 1872 which attracted no attention, in 1874 his Portrait of my Grandfather garnered critical acclaim and received a third-class medal. He also showed Song of Spring, an academically-oriented study of rural life, representing a peasant girl sitting on a knoll above a village, surrounded by wood nymphs.

His initial success was confirmed in 1875 by the First Communion, a picture of a little girl minutely worked up in manner that was compared to Hans Holbein[disambiguation needed], and a Portrait of M. Hayern. In 1875 he took second place in the competition for the Prix de Rome with his Angels appearing to the Shepherds, exhibited again at the Exposition Universelle in 1878. His next attempt to win the Prix de Rome in 1876 with Priam at the Feet of Achilles was again unsuccessful (it is in the Lille gallery), and the painter determined to return to country life. To the Salon of 1877 he sent a full-length Portrait of Lady L. and My Parents; and in 1878 a Portrait of M. Theuriet and Haymaking (Les Foins). The last picture, now in the Musée d’Orsay, was widely praised by critics and the public alike. It secured his status as one of the first painters in the Naturalist school.

After the success of Haymaking, Bastien-Lepage was recognized in France as the leader of the emerging Naturalist school. By 1883, a critic could proclaim that “The whole world paints so much today like M. Bastien-Lepage that M. Bastien-Lepage seems to paint like the whole world.” This fame brought him prominent commissions. His Portrait of Mlle Sarah Bernhardt (1879), painted in a light key, won him the cross of the Legion of Honour. In 1879 he was commissioned to paint the Prince of Wales. In 1880 he exhibited a small portrait of M. Andrieux and Joan of Arc listening to the Voices (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art); and in the same year, at the Royal Academy, the little portrait of the Prince of Wales. In 1881 he painted The Beggar and the Portrait of Albert Wolf; in 1882 Le Père Jacques; in 1885 Love in a Village, in which we find some trace of Gustave Courbet’s influence. His last dated work is The Forge (1884).

Between 1880 and 1883 he traveled in Italy. The artist, long ailing, had tried in vain to re-establish his health in Algiers. He died in Paris in 1884, when planning a new series of rural subjects. His friend, Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch, was with him at the end and wrote,

“At last he was unable to work anymore; and he died on the 10th of December, 1884, breathing his last in my arms. At his grave’s head his mother and brother planted an apple-tree.

In March and April 1885, more than 200 of his pictures were exhibited at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1889 some of his best-known work was shown at the Paris Exposition Universelle. Among his more important works, may also be mentioned the portrait of Mme J. Drouet (1883); Gambetta on his death-bed, and some landscapes; The Vintage (1880), and The Thames at London (1882). The Little Chimney-Sweep was never finished. A museum is devoted to him at Montmédy. A statue of Bastien-Lepage by Rodin was erected in Damvillers. An obituary by Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch, appeared in the Magazine of Art (Cassell) in 1890.

The influential English critic Roger Fry credited the wider public’s acceptance of the Impressionists, especially Claude Monet, to Bastien-Lepage. In his 1920 Essay in Æsthetics, Fry wrote: Monet is an artist whose chief claim to recognition lies in the fact of his astonishing power of faithfully reproducing certain aspects of nature, but his really naive innocence and sincerity was taken by the public to be the most audacious humbug, and it required the teaching of men like Bastien-Lepage, who cleverly compromised between the truth and an accepted convention of what things looked like, to bring the world gradually around to admitting truths which a single walk in the country with purely unbiassed vision would have established beyond doubt.

Ukrainian-born painter Marie Bashkirtseff formed a close friendship with Bastien-Lepage. Artistically, she took her cue from the French painter’s admiration for nature: “I say nothing of the fields because Bastien-Lepage reigns over them as a sovereign; but the streets, however, have not still had their… Bastien”. Her best-known work in this naturalist vein is A Meeting (now in the Musée d’Orsay), which was shown to wide acclaim at the Salon of 1884. By a curious coincidence she succumbed to chronic illness the same year as her mentor.

Jules Bastien-Lepage was originally published on HiSoUR Art Collection